Photographers

George Steinmetz

BIOGRAPHY

Best known for his exploration photography, George Steinmetz (b. 1957) has a restless curiosity for the unknown: remote deserts, obscure cultures, the mysteries of science and technology. A regular contributor to National Geographic and GEO Magazines, he has explored subjects ranging from the remotest stretches of Arabia’s Empty Quarter to the unknown tree people of Irian Jaya.

Steinmetz graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Geophysics. He began his career in photography after hitchhiking through Africa for 28 months. Since 1986, he has completed more than 40 major photo essays for National Geographic and 25 stories for GEO magazine in Germany. His expeditions to the Sahara and Gobi deserts have been featured in separate National Geographic Explorer programs. In 2006 he was awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to document the work of scientists in the Dry Valleys and volcanos of Antarctica.

Steinmetz has won numerous awards for photography during his 25-year career, including two first prizes in science and technology from World Press Photo. He has also won awards and citations from Pictures of the Year, Overseas Press Club and Life Magazine’s Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards, and was named National Geographic’s Adventurer of the year in 2008.

His current passion is photographing the world’s deserts while piloting a motorized paraglider. This experimental aircraft enables him to capture unique images of the world, inaccessible by traditional aircraft and most other modes of transportation. He lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his wife, Wall Street Journal editor Lisa Bannon, their daughter, Nell, and twin sons John and Nicholas.

At twilight, Manhattan resembles a vast living organism with ribbons of energy pulsing through its streets and up into its hundred thousand buildings. May 2014. Inquire about this image
At twilight, Manhattan resembles a vast living organism with ribbons of energy pulsing through its streets and up into its hundred thousand buildings. May 2014.

Rockefeller Center on a busy shopping day a week before Christmas, as seen from the roof of Saks Fifth Avenue. December 2014.Inquire about this image

Ice skaters crowd Wollman Rink on the SE corner of Central Park during the winter holiday season. December 2014.Inquire about this image

The carousel in Coney Island with MCU Baseball park in the background during a game between the Brooklyn Cyclones and the Staten Island Yankees on Labor Day weekend in New York City. August 2014.Inquire about this image

Sam Querrey serving to Novak Djokovic in the third round of the men’s singles at the 2014 US Open. August 2014.Inquire about this image

Runners from the 2014 New York Marathon take cups of water from volunteers along 4th Avenue in Brooklyn. November 2014.Inquire about this image

A photographic installation by the artist JR adorns the roof of a building that used to tape The Colbert Report on West 54th Street. December 2014.Inquire about this image

NEW YORK AIR

New York Air captures the thrilling complexity and romance of 21st-century New York City from above. With its new skyline and waterfront landscape, dazzling contemporary architecture and historic buildings—along with parks and streets and rooftops used for every possible purpose, and the massive infrastructure that keeps it all going, New York Air presents a captivating view of one of the world’s greatest cities from above. Included in the exhibition are such iconic places as Central Park and Times Square, new landmarks such as the High Line and the September 11 Memorial, One World Trade Center, and intriguing sites throughout the five boroughs. Steinmetz records some of the city’s beloved traditions—such as the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, the New York marathon, and the U.S. Open—but what makes his photographs special is their surprising intimacy capturing New Yorkers going about their daily lives.

DESERT AIR

George Steinmetz set out to photograph all of the world’s extreme deserts. To get aloft in such remote places he learned how to fly the world’s lightest and slowest aircraft, a motorized paraglider. His foot-launched aircraft gave him the ability to see these seldom visited areas in a way that has never been realized before.

The Desert Air project took him to 27 countries plus Antarctica to create the first comprehensive photographic book on all of the world’s hyper arid deserts. These include the most remote and inhospitable place on earth, from the summits of the Andes to the shores of the Dead Sea. Steinmetz ventured from the hottest place on earth, in the Afar Depression of Ethiopia, to the coldest in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

What many people believe to be wastelands, he found to be the last great class of wilderness left on our planet. In these austere environments he discovered extraordinary perseverance of life at the very limit of survival, and fragile landscapes and ecosystems that are in need of conservation.

Salt Caravan, Lake Assale.

Tigrean and Afari men pry slabs of salt out of the dry section of Lake Assale. The salt will be carried by camel and donkey up the East African rift to Tigre province where it will be sold for human and animal consumption. The young men make an average of 150-200 Ethiopian Birr (16.6 Birr = $1.00) per day in a traditional labor and trade that has been ongoing for centuries. The lake is some 150m. below sea level. Camels depart with 20 slabs of salt each weighing approximately 7kg., for a total load of approx. 300 lbs. Inquire about this image

Camel Caravan, Mauritania.
A small group of French tourists retrace ancient caravan routes between dying Mauritanian oasis towns. Inquire about this image

Salt Works #2, Teguidda-n-Tessoumt, Niger.

Like a mosaic laid in the hard floor of the desert, pools of evaporating salt water are worked over by the people of Teguidda-n-Tessoumt. Briny water is drawn from shallow wells and mixed with salty soil to produce slurries of different colors, whose hue depends on the color of the mud, algae, as well as the amount of salt that has hardened on the surface. Inquire about this image

Sandstone Pinnacles, Karnasai Valley, Chad.

Pinnacles of sandstone rise through the orange dunes of the Karnasai Valley, a few kilometers from Chad’s border with Libya. The orange sand is formed by the erosion of Nubian Sandstone, which itself was formed from ancient sand dunes millions of years ago. Thus the sand is being recycled, from dune to rock to sand and back to dune again. Strong Harmattan winds sandblast the base of the sandstone pinnacles, and beautiful wind pits around their bases. This is one of the most remote parts of the Sahara. Except for one or two families of goat herders who come here once a year, it is uninhabited and otherworldly. Inquire about this image

Barchan Dunes, Paracas National Park, Peru.

Paracas National Park, a sparsely inhabited section of the South Peruvian Coast, is almost totally lifeless above ground and one of the world’s richest fisheries off shore. Barchan dunes start their march into the desert as the coast bends away from the direction of the Humboldt Current. Barchan Dunes can be construed as the largest life form of the desert, as they fulfill the technical definitions of a life form: by moving, growing, responding to stimulation and propagating. Inquire about this image

Pacific Coast, Southern Peru.

Waves of water meet waves of sand in this aerial view of the Pacific Coast of Southern Peru. The beach sand has formed crescent-shaped barchan dunes, which are caused by strong winds always oriented in the same direction. Inquire about this image

Paraglider over Mega Dunes, Dasht-e Lut, Iran.

Mega-dunes of the Dasht-e Lut.; These are the largest and tallest dune fields in Iran, reaching over 300M in height and covering an area approx. 50 X 150 Km. The dunes appear to be the resting place for all the sand and silt excavated by winds that carved the adjacent Dasht-e Lut yardang field. Inquire about this image

Expedition Cars Crossing the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia.

Eastern margin of Salar de Uyuni (some 30km north of Colchani), which was flooded from heavy rains in March. Expedition cars trying to cross flooded section which is less than 30cm deep. Inquire about this image

Evaporation Ponds, Dead Sea, Israel.

Aerial views of earthen dikes separating salt evaporation ponds along the Israeli shore of the south lake of the Dead Sea, directly adjacent to the Jordanian border. Salt water here is ten times as salty as sea water. The flow rate from pond to pond is controlled to precipitate out all of the Sodium Chloride (NaCl, or table salt) from the Dead Sea water which is pumped up to them from the north lake. The floor of these primary evaporation pans is going up by approx. 20cm/year due to NaCl salts precipitating out of the water. The crystals of NaCl bond to take on seemingly organic patterns of white amidst the hyper-saline green water of the ponds. After all of the NaCl is precipitated out, the salt water is pumped up to a second cascade of evaporation ponds to concentrate the potassium chloride (KCl), which is exported as potash, a component of agricultural fertilizer. The Dead Sea Works produces 10% of the worlds potash, which is 1.4% of Israel's GDP. There is a similar potash works on the Jordanian side of the border, but it's somewhat smaller than the Dead Sea works in Israel. Inquire about this image

Sun Bathers, Dead Sea, Israel.

Sun bathers and swimmers on a Saturday (Sabbath) morning on the edge of the southern lake of the Dead Sea. Inquire about this image

Beni Isguen, Algeria.

Aerial views of Beni Isguen, the most conservative and exquisitely preserved of the ancient hill towns in Ghardaia, a World Heritage Site. Inquire about this image

MIGRATIONS

“I always keep an eye out for wildlife”, says Steinmetz, “but it’s getting increasingly hard to locate as the world’s population grows and more wildlife habitat is taken for development. It’s usually the poor that move into the few remaining wilderness areas trying to survive with their livestock or hunting on a subsistence level. It’s difficult to balance their need for survival with that of the wildlife. Migratory wildlife is even harder to protect, even with National Parks, as herds often circulate outside of conservation areas. However in some instances, migration over vast, roadless expanses can protect wildlife from hunting.”

Steinmetz’s motorized paraglider is the slowest and quietest powered aircraft in the world, therefore, it is particularly well suited for capturing images of wildlife. Such remote areas also lend themselves to unusual aerial access where Steinmetz can take off and land without an airfield or government restrictions. Moving slow and low over herds of animals in very remote places enables him to visualize ecosystems in ways not possible before.

EMPTY QUARTER

I became captivated by Arabia’s Empty Quarter as a young man when I read Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands. The Empty Quarter is larger than France without a single permanent point of water or human habitation. It’s both the world’s largest sand sea and one of the hottest places on earth, and has only been traversed a handful of times. I didn’t want to repeat Thesiger’s epic journeys many decades later, but when I discovered motorized paragliding I found a way to visualize this remote landscape in a new way. I made three paragliding trips into the sands, first for GEO in Saudi Arabia, and then returned two years later to go from Riyadh to Oman and Yemen for National Geographic, and finally made a personal trip to the southern most reaches of the U.A.E. to complete my field work. What I found was one of the most beautiful and unseen wildernesses on earth. On its fringes I encountered elements the oil wealth that has forever changed Arabia, but I also found Bedouins still clinging to traditions, and offering up a level of hospitality that was truly humbling. This body of work would simply not have been possible without their kindness.